Editor:

I can understand Sheriff Downey being overwhelmed in his Herculean efforts to close down marijuana grows in his fiefdom ("Downey Calls for Backup," July 26.). But what the Journal's article does not mention is that law enforcement gets to keep all the money it seizes. And we're not talking spare change here, but serious cash. A while back the Journal ran an article ("Drug Money," Feb. 2) on what they spend it on. Apparently it's stuff like office supplies, pens, paperclips and things of that nature. Oh, and $400 boots! The way our city and county governments are starved for cash, I don't see why seized drug money can't go into the general fund.

 I can visualize when they uncover a substantial amount of cash, a "ca-ching" and high-fives all around.

Richard C. Brown, Eureka

Editor:

If the state could read the hand-writing on the wall, they would forget the feds. Legalize and make quite a dent in the budget with a new tourism and of course legal hemp growing on every state owned land.

If they maintain marijuana is dangerous to your health, they could use the added tax revenue to fund health care for the "addicted." Not punishment.  It seems they are just wrong-headed and stubborn, maybe even stupid.

And if pot were legal, you wouldn't see farming in the forests with generators and rat poison. The lower prices would drive out the big commercial grows. And maybe greenhouses would replace energy-hogging indoor grows.

Time to pull our collective heads out of the sand, eh? Let's have the police do real work on real crimes. Beats sending our tax dollars up in smoke, IMHO.

George Kirkpatrick, Fieldbrook